Great things never came from comfort zones...
I can't believe how fast the season is going, it really doesn't seem like much more than a few weeks ago that the RTTC National Championships were a distant focus - those big races somewhere near the end of the season! Now they've been and gone in a flash, as has the Castle Combe series finale. The conditions couldn't have been more different if they'd tried, it was like totally different seasons; the '25' being baking hot and the '10' being wet and windy and Castle Combe in the middle being pleasant.
The National 25 kicked off the first of the two RTTC blue ribbon events that I was riding, so a trip back down to Peterborough was required, in fact the course wasn't far away from the Tour of Cambridgeshire HQ. As we were driving down the M1 we noticed the warning on the gantry 'A1 closed further ahead', little did we realise that the diversion route for this traffic was to be part of the TT course...
Having signed in at HQ and collected my numbers (back and arm numbers required at National Championships), we set off to drive the course. It took us at least 10 minutes to work out that we must've come out of HQ a different way as we'd not seen the start and were far from sure where we were but had seen a race sign on one of the (many) roundabouts and several photographers parked up. We knew we weren't a million miles away but quite where we were on the course was a bit of a mystery! Eventually we saw a small homemade sign in the grass just before one of the (lost count of how many by now) roundabouts indicating 'lap 1 - turn, lap 2 - straight on'... This must be the loop point then, so the start couldn't be far away.
With the start eventually located, the course driven, and a few parking places eyed up it was time to get cracking. I know Summer is preciously short in the UK so we mustn't complain when we get a hot day, but at a sultry 28 degrees it was a bit too warm for racing for my liking! Paul adopted the umbrella trick to try and keep the worst of the sun off - which does make a welcome change from the rain but even so it was still humid and airless. It was so hot that a few of us cut our warm up routines short, some just rode steadily to the start and one of my friends was to be found rapidly shoving ice cubes down her front!! That seemed a pretty good shout at the time I must say!
Eventually it was my turn to be counted down at the start. The first section was all about keeping on top of the gears and then attack the undulating section to the roundabout. This is perhaps a good point to mention the number of roundabouts given there was a ridiculous amount of them, I think it was 10 in total! After roundabout three was where the road surface was terribly leg sapping. Apparently it had recently been resurfaced, I wonder if the highways team knew what pain they were inadvertently inflicting?! However, all I could do was pedal hard and that is what I did, my minute woman was within reach and swiftly passed, I could also see my two minute woman up ahead, shortly after she was caught came the drag up to the turn point (roundabout number 5?!), on the exit of which I caught my three minute woman! It was now a lonely road ahead with literally nobody in sight, just the Tarmac and me and that wretched wind (of the weather variety). It was like pedalling treacle, I must have looked like a slow motion video to anyone watching.
Roundabout number 4 was busy, all the traffic was coming off here for the diversion so a sneaky manoeuvre up the inside to avoid getting caught was called for. It was busy through the next two roundabouts but had quietened down by the third, which was the point at which we went back on ourselves to ride that loop again... Oh joy! Suffice to say it felt far harder the second time around! In fact I was feeling so hot that I was wishing one of the spectators would accidentally throw a bucket of water over me. The final run in to the finish could have been far better, I stayed down on the aero bars and misjudged my exit point; having to run very wide. I then thought that the line was just down the hill, but no it was half a mile further on... Bother, not what you need when you've wound the legs up to try and drain the last ounce of energy out of them about 400m too soon!
Back at HQ I was very pleasantly surprised to see that I'd managed 13th place. Although that might not sound like much to celebrate there were plenty of quality riders behind me, including Clarry the world hour record holder and both the silver and bronze medalists from the World Amateur TT finals in Denmark last year. It seems I wasn't the only one to have suffered in the heat.
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| Definitely the motto for the 25... a very tough day |
No sooner had the legs recovered from this then it was Castle Combe time again. As it was the finale and they'd foolishly said they had nothing better to do, my parents came along to support. Their last outing to support me involved a crazy train journey from Copenhagen at an obscenely early hour to get to Aalborg for the aforementioned Denmark TT. At least this time they only had a 45 minute drive, although I believe the scenic route may have been taken! Much to their relief, I was far easier to spot being in my Pro Vision Skinsuit (there were complaints that 'we all looked the same' in our GB kit in Denmark) and being a circuit TT if they missed me the first time around at least they had five more opportunities!!
I needed a win to secure the series but I also had the thought of a course pb in the back of my mind. The conditions were hard to judge as the headwind had moved further around the track than it had been previously. I had the benefit of my minute woman being the lady that I thought would also be a close contender for the win. For the first time in the series I actually had a target other than my power numbers. There was no sign of her out on the track ahead of me, so she must have had a rocket propelled first lap! I was starting to panic, just a little, when half way around lap two I caught sight of her in the second chicane. I'd caught her by the bend up the start straight and could feel some relief. Now it was 'just' the challenge of riding as hard as I could for the remaining three laps. Knowing the series was at stake tonight, there was an element of caution through the chicanes, unlike the May race where it was an edge of the seat kind of night! I wound the last two laps up as much as I thought I could without blowing up before the finish, resulting in the last lap being my fastest ever by two seconds. Unbelievably I'd just missed a course pb and my own course record by 0.2 seconds!! The series was secured 4 - 0 so all in all a pretty good evening and a nice end to what has been a really good series hosted by DB Max and Kinetic One.
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| The picturesque Castle Combe village |
Another week and another race... The second of the two RTTC National Championships, this time the '10' in Dorking, Surrey. Yes, that is quite a trek for a short event! Friends who had travelled down earlier in the week were posting photos on social media of the monsoon that they were looking at out of their motorhome window. We could only hope that the forecast was correct and it was due to clear by my start time. Courtesy of my 21:13 in Hull earlier in the Summer I was seeded 8th - an equally proud but scary thought given the calibre of riders who were going earlier in the field. In fact you could be forgiven for looking at the startlist and thinking that it wasn't a Time Trial at all but a National road race. Many of the names on there were from professional road teams who would never ordinarily ride a time trial outside of within a stage race. This made it all the more unpredictable, although (all things being equal), the top two were always going to be Hayley Simmonds and Anna Turvey.
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| The strongest field ever for the National 10 |
The start turned out to be literally a few hundred metres from Dorking Fire Station so with my Staffs Fire ID badge in hand I set off to ask the duty watch if we could park and warm up on the yard. Being the kind bunch that they are, nothing was too much trouble and we were soon warming up in one of the vehicle wash bays as the heavens had opened again. This was really handy and I'm very grateful to blue watch for their hospitality and kind offers of (what we do best in the Fire Service) cups of tea!!
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| The perfect warm up in the dry! |
I had a massive 4 minute gap at the start as my 2 minute woman (and friend) was poorly so I knew I wasn't likely to see anyone out on the road at all. The weather stayed dry but was exceptionally windy. I lost all confidence in my front wheel at about a mile in as a massive gust of wind literally tried to snatch it from underneath me. It was almost a case of coming onto the base bars for stability but I just managed to hold tight. That answered the question of why we'd seen numerous juniors on the base bars when we drive the course earlier. It was heavy going on the way out, with a headwind and violent crosswinds taking it in turns to test us to the limit. The way back didn't feel much better as the few little drags seemed like mountains with the legs having already been battered in the other direction!
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| Having a fight to keep my front wheel facing forwards! |
